Where does the reporting happen? #626
Replies: 34 comments 86 replies
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Anyone? |
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How can we test whether the playback history is being recorded or not? I am willing to fix this issue for librespot-java, but I need a way to test it properly. |
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That's a good point and something I'll try to do: you can get the recently played tracks using the web API (the call is still beta... hopefully that won't confuse even more...). https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/reference/player/get-recently-played/ |
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@michaelherger I've checked and it seems that tracks played from librespot aren't reported by that endpoint. I will investigate this further. |
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Thanks for the confirmation! |
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Unluckily I don't see any specific call to report that a track is playing. I am afraid that it is done via the There's no reporting in the HTTP API either. Android doesn't seem to have any of this either. I've also noticed that the Recently played API updates quite slowly, so maybe librespot-java works with reporting? Don't know. |
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@devgianlu There is also an |
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I did not see any of that. Maybe it has been deprecated when they upgraded the protocol. |
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This was from an older version indeed. I need to find my notes. |
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I think that's for episodes only. |
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You are probably right again, its been a while I looked at this! |
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Any updates on this? |
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We are stuck on trying to find a way to check if the changes on the client work. |
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It’s probably handled via the events service. I’d be surprised if Spotify does the play reporting client side, would make it too easy to abuse. Then again, I can’t see how they track it server side unless they’re doing some sort of calculation based on the number of chunks sent to a client |
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I was thinking about this some time back, and I guess they probably have metrics based on client type, and since we report |
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its better to send them if they are generated to behave like a original client. |
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What do you mean? |
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does librespot now sends correctly the playing track to the endpoint? because it seems like that still hearing a song, does not appearing to the endpoint of the artist |
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No, only |
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im using librespot-java and there is still something not working regarding that endpoint. listening to a song does not appear on the artist site as someone is listening. What exactly does work now, and what not? Does it only work if a song without pressing any button like above mentioned (only via trackdone) is listened, that the endpoint get the information about trackdone? |
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Hi - as I'd really appreciate if streaming through librespot gets credited to the artists - is it possible to get the partial solution from librespot-java implemented in the main librespot branch - possibly also find a solution to the limitations of the current fix. I don't like artists getting "cheated" out of the royalties for streaming. |
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In |
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@Johannesd3 Edit: Hmm, from Spotify's Docs downloaded plays are included that we do not report. |
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I have no way of knowing or testing - I started to suspect something was odd when I noticed that my "Spotify year in review" was way off "Last.fm year summary" - then I found this thread. I've talked to an artist I know - and he had a retired band called Monumentum witch receive less than 10 streams a day for this track (Whore): https://open.spotify.com/track/5scAew6okD9CUIwumeswc6?si=KqYqb1NxQH2ey594c3YHgg If more people test some streams each through Librespot - I will report back if the stats is updated with a significant change in a couple of days. (Please don't use official apps 😅)
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I think many of the questions here already have been answered towards the top of this discussion. The simplest indication is that what you play wouldn't show up in your play history. My Weekly Discovery or similar playlist has nothing to do with what I actually listen to... I've worked with close to a dozen streaming services over the years. And it's not unusual to have the reporting implemented on the client. Most services would give the client a URL to play, but leave the control to the implementation. Whether the stream was played or not, only the client application knows. And, as has been mentioned here today, even for Spotify there must be something like that, as the offline mode would not allow Spotify to see what has been played while offline. Keep in mind that this is not "being naive", but part of a contract between the services and the developer of a client: either the reporting is implemented correctly, or you (as a developer) get blocked. librespot is different in this regard, as there's no contract, but things have been reverse engineered. And it's my understanding that the development of librespot always tried to play fair. |
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Using librespot-java I don't seem to have this problem. My personal playlists make sense and my yearly summary had quite a lot of artists listened to, too many to be coming from my phone alone. I haven't checked in a while, but songs appear in the recently played API endpoint too. The only thing that was broken at the time was skipping a track. |
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Btw, what happens if a downloaded track is played offline in the official client? Does that appear on the artist site? |
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It will probably be reported when the client goes back online. The same happens when you close the client, the last played song events are sent on the next startup. |
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it does report when you go online |
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Checking to see if "reporting" has made any progress. Would be good to make sure artists get the (small) sum they are due and there are other feature requests from at least one downstream client which may be related (i.e. last.fm reporting). |
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I totally agree and porting it from |
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It's honestly baffling that Spotify's API is this lacking. |
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I’m not sure if it’s lacking, it’s just that we haven’t fully figured it out yet. |
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can just tell that |
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No, I haven't gotten around to porting it yet. Also it'll be what's in |
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It would be great if this was implemented. Spotify would probably try to curb librespot if it was reporting back playcounts - so I can understand why it hasn't been added yet. As it stands, using this project to |
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I believe reporting should be implemented if possible. Lack of reporting can be reason enough for Spotify to kill the project. There really is no reason not to do it - except for the lack of documentation, time and resources of course 😁. I like the fact how the librespot project has continuously (tried to) shut down or stop illegal use of the code (eg. music file downloaders). It has been working hard to be a good citizen in the Spotify landscape. Implementing the reporting would only be in line with this stance. |
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I can supply access to artist account that has no previous traffic if that would help with testing. |
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If you kill an entirely reverse engineered project for not reverse engineering a particular part of your private system then I think you're just looking for a reason to kill the project, because that's a ridiculous stance. I'm not sure this reason not to implement it actually matters but it is something to think carefully about and implement carefully. Fortunately it's moot until someone works out how to do it! Edit: here's some context https://ppcprotect.com/blog/ad-fraud/spotify-streaming-farms/ |
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Also regardless of the legal complexities, reverse engineering reporting and reproducing the functionality 1-1 is all we should be aiming to do - preventing potential fraud is not really within the scope of librespot, and anyone using librespot provides Spotify with all the identifying information that they need to be able to counter fake plays if they want to. It's not our problem to deal with. |
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Great discussion everyone, thanks.
No-one except Spotify knows for certain of course. Technically I wonder if it'd be different depending on the handshake. We don't authenticate as Since clients can play tracks offline, I guess that they would buffer playback history locally and report all that on connection. Again this is a total guess (I haven't looked at the traffic yet) but if so, that would be another nudge towards client-based reporting instead of server-based reporting.
Is that the same thing? I can attest that when you have
Amen to that. |
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Hi, I'm curious about the status of the reporting back to Spotify of a played track. Is this still an issue or has it been fixed somewhere else? Thanks |
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Still not implemented. |
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Is this likely to ever be implemented? Especially with the rise of apps like stats.fm, as the lack of reporting breaks the app. The mentioned app/site is however a good way to test the reporting functionality. |
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It will require someone to put the legwork in to reverse and implement it. The thus far unspoken challenge is that without it artists are missing out on a few fractions of a cent, and with it implemented someone may potentially try to cheat. |
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Librespot-Java has got parts figured out. I just did not get around to porting it. |
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Looks like librespot-java isn't working in this regard now though |
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although, my own tests seem to show that the issue isn't reproducible. |
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Perhaps an interesting method of achieving this feature would be analysing how the client stores then reports offline listens once connection is reestablished. It would probably be easier to get this right, but would make live listen information (think discord now playing etc). |
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I seem pretty late to the party, so apologies if someone has already figured this out. But I haven't seen anyone mention this yet so here's my two cents: {
"seq_num": 17,
"state_ref": {
"state_machine_id": "<id>",
"state_id": "<id>",
"paused": false
},
"sub_state": {
"playback_speed": 1,
"position": 0,
"duration": 158656,
"media_type": "AUDIO",
"bitrate": 256000,
"audio_quality": "VERY_HIGH",
"format": 11
},
"previous_position": 173930,
"debug_source": "before_track_load"
}Edit: for reference, ALL fields are required. |
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It's a rhetorical question! What would be the legitimate use of the stream count? If you give me 3 good reasons, I'll release the public repo today |
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Without it premium users are just ghost streaming, spotify pockets the sub cash and the actual artists get exactly $0. it also completely bricks algorithms like discover weekly and wrapped, plus third party apps for stats also become useless. on top of that, basic account ux is broken since "recently played" doesn't sync across devices and discord rich presence stays dead. the whole point of librespot is 1:1 emulation anyway, so gatekeeping a core feature because you're scared of botters makes no sense when spotify literally has entire teams dedicated to fighting fraud. |
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Honestly, you are completely right on the first point, those who use a Spotify premium account with Librespot are not compensating the artists, this is true and legitimate. |
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My feelings on this are mixed. There are legitimate arguments for adding the reporting functionality around compensating artists, accurate play history, etc. Equally there are pragmatic considerations that if implemented in librespot, there are enough dipshits out there that will clone and modify librespot to do nefarious things like artificially increasing streaming numbers - given it's financial implications this is likely to attract the ire of Spotify's lawyers, which as an open source/contributor led project, is not looking to play the lawfare game for the sake of streaming music at home. I don't know what the right solution is. My feeling is that if someone wants to implement reporting in their own fork and see if they get a valid DMCA/wants to fight it on the grounds of interoperability then that's their perogative. As things currently stand it seems foolish to add such a minor 'feature' to the main project given the risks. A long term solution could be to implement a plugin-type system, where librespot hooks at certain points to use functionality implemented outside the project, such as the reporting being discussed here, lossless file decryption for any users that have a legitimate solution to decrypting it, etc. This would enable the functionality to be used within librespot without any of the unclear/messy legal questions raised in several of these feature requests and implementation code being present within the repo iteself. All of this is just my musing - I sadly don't have time to dedicate to this project like I used to, it would be up to the more active maintainers to decide whether this is a direction they would be interested in examining. In the meantime can we keep opinion based/non-informative discussion here to a minimum - everyone can see the arguments for and against, arguing either side of it here isn't going to progress things in either direction. |
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I agree with all of the above. I want to add, a hook for an alternate audio key implementation could be helpful for #1649 and potentially help undo the mess Spotify have made, without drawing flak here. |
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It's possible to add the stream reporting just for personal stats and legal problems are avoided, the problem is that if I publish it, I open the door to those who then want to abuse it... I'm torn |
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For just personal stats, reporting play counts to lastfm/librefm/listenbrainz works today. You can use the existing event system to submit the plays, or find some other app with librespot integration that handles submissions (scrobbling) for you. You won't be able to use Spotify Unwrapped etc. but listenbrainz has cool features, including their version of Unwrapped. So I think you can be less torn about this, there are workarounds some might find sufficient. Personally, I've always used Spotify's last.fm integration and configured my other players/services to send their data to lastfm too. I also use the automatic importing of lastfm data into listenbrainz (see here) because I consider it valuable. |
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I've had a report of a user who happens to be an artist, too. He claims that when he's listening to his own music using my implementation of librespot, the tracks would not be reported. This is definitely not what I want to happen, therefore I'm a bit concerned.
And I must admit I've been wondering why my kids' listening habits hadn't polluted my profile yet... (but I was less concerned about that :-D).
Is there code in librespot which actively does report when a track has been listened to? I was assuming that telling librespot to play a track would do all the magic for me.
I'm using a slightly modified fork of librespot (https://github.com/michaelherger/librespot), and I'm not sure whether one of my modifications is causing this mis-behavior or not.
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